


Flour Babies, or: Remus Lupin, Risk Assessment Co-ordinator and Occasional Voice of Reason

by jellybeany



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Flour Babies, Humor, Kissing, Love, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:15:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26431006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeany/pseuds/jellybeany
Summary: “What’s carrying a bag of flour around all day for a term supposed to teach us about parenting, I ask you?”The one where the Marauders have to take care of flour babies - or at least, not completely destroy them.James is trying to impress Lily, Sirius has a problem with his backside, and Remus is, as always, trying not to flunk.And he's dreadfully in love with his best friend.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 456





	Flour Babies, or: Remus Lupin, Risk Assessment Co-ordinator and Occasional Voice of Reason

“A baby,” said James dumbfoundedly. “I’m going to have a baby.”

He took a long drag on the gillyweed cigarette the four of them were sharing, and tried to blow a smoke ring. It didn’t work. He looked like a constipated goldfish having a bad hair day, and Sirius told him so.

It was a free period, and the Marauders were sat on the drystone wall by the gamekeeper’s cottage down by the lake. The wall was held together with nothing more than a wish and a prayer, and Remus often thought that one of these days it was going to crumble. But until then, they sat on it.

The clouds were a threatening shade of grey, so there weren’t any other students around, and it was quiet except for the sounds of Hagrid training his new puppy down by the pumpkin patch.

“We’re _all_ going to have a baby,” said Sirius, nabbing the fag.

“We’re _each_ going to have _a bag of flour_ ,” corrected Remus, who was right, as usual. He watched Sirius purse his lips around the paper, then exhale a plume of violet smoke. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. Remus copied the motion involuntarily.

“Flour babies,” said Peter scornfully.

Sirius rolled his eyes and passed the cigarette to Remus, who didn’t smoke, and passed it directly to Peter. “It’s bollocks. It’ll be a piece of piss, but it’s bollocks,” he continued, kicking his legs idly against the wall.

“Piss _and_ bollocks?” Remus ruminated. “At the same time?”

“What’s carrying a bag of flour around all day for a term supposed to teach us about parenting, I ask you? You know, I respect and admire the man, but ol’ Dumble’s finally gone off his rocker.”

“I don’t fancy being a dad,” said Peter. “We’d be better off using all that flour in bread or something.”

“You would say that,” Sirius jibed, eyeing Peter’s not-inconsiderable girth.

“At least I’m not inbred,” Peter shot back, which Remus thought was quite impressive wordplay (for Peter). He flicked the fag end at Sirius, who caught it deftly and exploded it with a flick of his wand. “If you ever had a baby, it’d probably be born with its head stuck to its arse.”

“Well, if you—“

“James, what do you think about it?” Remus called loudly, trying to drown out Sirius so he wouldn’t have to hear him and Peter bicker all evening.

James had been staring out at the lake, ignoring them and looking as if he was pondering deep and profound thoughts. They all went silent, waiting for him to speak, for James Potter was their Dear Leader. If James did something, Sirius did it too. And if the two of them were doing something, Peter wanted in on it. Remus went along with them under the pretence of being Risk Assessment Co-ordinator and Occasional Voice of Reason, but mostly he did it because he was dreadfully in love with Sirius and would follow him to the ends of the earth. And further, if necessary.

“I think…” James stared out at the lake, sat up straight and raised his chin as if he was delivering a speech to a crowd of people before him, instead of to three teenage boys who couldn’t grow a single moustache between them. “I think it’s not a bad idea. It could be good practice for when we really have kids, in the future. Plus, how hard can it be?”

“You only think it’s a good idea cause you get to work with Evans. You know she will never, ever, agree to mother your spawn, Prongs,” said Sirius tactfully. “Not in a million, billion years.”

“Hope springs eternal,” James replied wisely.

“Piss springs eternal,” Sirius said, watching Hagrid’s puppy pee all over the pumpkin patch while Hagrid fell to his knees, burying his head in his dustbin lid-sized hands. Sirius fished a chocolate frog out of his bag and snapped the head off.

“What is it with you and piss today?” Remus asked, taking the chocolate frog head offered to him with a well-earned degree of suspicion. “At least you three are partnered with girls. How’d you like to be partnered with Snape, eh?”

All four of them shivered. The clock tower chimed, marking seven minutes until the next class, and a few crows squawked and flew off over the forest. They shoved off the wall and picked up their bags, and began to head back up to the castle.

“I can promise you this is going to be a disaster,” Remus announced as they passed through the stone circle. Assessing Risk was both his duty, and his vocation. “Look at us: we’re not cut out to be fathers. We can’t be trusted with bags of flour. They’re going to get forgotten, or sodden, or soiled, or stolen, or set on fire, or flushed down a toilet, or used in a potion, or baked in a pie, or sacrificed in one of Prongs’ stupid rituals.”

“Hush your gums, Moony. It’ll be fine.”

“Fine? Sirius, judging by the way you’re fiddling with your robes, I’m guessing you’ve got your underpants on backwards.”

Sirius opened his flies, fiddled a bit more, then hummed.

“Oh, so I have.”

Remus knew he had, since he’d watched him dress that morning.

“Plonker,” James snickered.

“See? You can’t even dress yourself. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

“You never know,” Sirius said cheerfully, slinging an arm around Remus’s shoulders. “You might learn something.”

*

By eight o’clock that evening, Remus had learned how to eat soup one-handed. And he had the stains on his shirt to prove it. He held the spoon in his right hand, and in his left, cradled the flour baby gently. It was fine. He had fully expected the baby to be charmed to cry during the night, or need feeding, or even nappy changing. Thank Merlin, Morgana, Circe and Hecate: the baby didn’t do anything.

It was right creepy, though.

It wasn’t exactly a bag of flour, it was flour poured in to a pair of stockings, shaped to look eerily like a newborn. McGonagall had said they were to give it a name and clothes, and carry it everywhere. If they needed two hands, they had to find a babysitter. It was supposed to teach them responsibility.

So far, it was mostly teaching him about inconvenience.

And embarrassment, since he was the only one at the table holding a facsimile baby. The others’ partners had taken theirs and were sitting together at the Hufflepuff table, chatting and giggling like an NCT group.

Still, at least Snape hadn’t been too bad, Remus told himself, thinking about a few hours earlier when the flour babies had been distributed. Snape had stalked over to him in dusty robes, said he wanted as little to do with him as possible, and suggested they take turns caring for it. The feeling was mutual, so Remus gratefully accepted and agreed to take the baby for the first three days.

He would have felt more confident if Snape hadn’t been eyeing him from the Slytherin table, face contorted uncomfortably as if he was anticipating Remus spilling hot soup all over it.

That was the most important rule. McGonagall had been clear on that. _No harm shall come to the flour baby._

James noticed him looking, and leaned in.

“Why’d’you get partnered with him, and not a girl? Is he gay?”

“Because, there aren’t an equal number of male and female students in our year,” Remus said calmly over the sound of Sirius choking on soup. He shielded the baby’s face in case Sirius vomited on it. “And how should I know if he’s gay?” He raised an eyebrow, aiming for a tone that suggested whatever James thinks he knows, he doesn’t. _Even if somehow, he does._ It could be that Prongs was always bringing up homosexuality to subtly show that he was totally fine with it, but Remus would rather he just shut up. Because now Sirius will—

“Urgh, that’s disgusting! Don’t put that image in my head, you’ll put me off my dinner.”

“What dinner? You spat most of it onto the tablecloth.”

“Snivellus Snape is a non-sexual being. In fact, he doesn’t even have genitals. He’s smooth down there, like an Action Man.”

“Been looking, have you?” jeered Pete, who none of them realised had been sitting there.

Sirius glanced at the staff table and threw a handful of mashed potato at him.

“It’s safe, you can come out now!” he called five minutes later, after the ensuing food fight had ended (Sirius had won). Remus cancelled his Shield charm and crawled out from under the table, taking the flour baby out from inside his robes, where he had swaddled it to protect it from any projectile foodstuffs.

“I’ll thank you not to throw food around. I refuse to get a Troll grade because you three are barbarians. We’re meant to be looking after these fake babies, not acting like them.”

“Chill out, Moonpie. If worst comes to worst, we can beg flour off the house elves and make another one. You won’t fail, I promise.”

 _That’s true_ , Remus thought, cheering up quickly and reaching for a slice of treacle tart with one hand. All hope is not yet lost.

*

“He is the definition of a lost cause,” murmured Snape, holding the flour baby at arms length as if it stunk of old cheese. Remus had been sitting in the Quidditch stands doing his Transfiguration homework when Snape had come to take over guardianship. “I pray you won’t sink to the same depths of stupidity.”

He was talking about Sirius, who was flying around the pitch with the Prewett twins. He scored another goal and hung upside down from his broom in celebration, whooping. Remus might have cheered, if Sirius had been playing with a quaffle, rather than tossing his own flour baby through the goal hoops. Pads was legendary on a broom so it was unlikely he would drop it, but it made Remus itch all the same. Snape was probably right, he was a lost cause.

“Actually, can you take it next weekend? I’ll come and get it on Monday.”

“Is next weekend not… suitable for you?” Snape drawled greasily. Saturday was a full moon, and they both knew it. “Of course, we wouldn’t want it to come to any harm.”

Remus smiled blandly. It was almost as satisfying as punching Snape in the face. At least this way, he didn’t give him the satisfaction.

*

But Snape’s words were still on his mind as he was brushing his teeth before bed that night. Sirius was a danger to all living creatures because he was a reckless, feckless nitwit, but he might grow out of that one day. Remus would always be part-wolf. He would never want to harm anything, but it was out of his control. How would he fare with a real baby?

Remus spat toothpaste into the sink, looked at himself in the mirror, and reminded himself he was only seventeen, and not actually a father. Only to a flour baby. He had sworn to protect it, because… Because he was the responsible one.

And because his grade depended on it.

He came back into dormitory just in time to see James force a perambulator through the doorway.

God knows where he got it from. It had four wheels with golden spokes, and a large black bassinet big enough to fit Padfoot. It creaked dangerously as James shoved at it, and Remus sent up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t be treading on tiny bits of broken metal for the next week.

“Behold!” James lifted the flour baby out of the pram and high into the air above his head. “Balthazar!”

“Is that what you named it?” Remus climbed into bed and found Padfoot lying in dog form under the covers. He licked at Remus’ toes, and in return got swatted on the snout with a rolled up _Quidditch Today._

“Yeah. Lily wanted to name it something boring. I told her, when we have a real baby, she can name it Harry.”

“Ah,” says Sirius, transforming back into his teenage body in a mini whirlwind and throwing the Quidditch magazine across the room. “Is that why you were walking around with your nose hexed to your kneecaps all last Wednesday?”

“Yep,” James said shamelessly. “But she’ll come round.”

“When Hell freezes over,” Remus mumbled into his book.

“Oh, ye of little faith!” James shouted, because it was something he liked to shout sometimes. “What did you name yours, then?”

“Jack.”

“Well, that’s fucking imaginative."

“Oi! Watch your language in front of the baby,” Sirius said primly, covering his flour baby’s ears.

“Coming from the one who named his baby Fanny.”

“Fanny is a perfectly respectable name, I’ll have you know! It’s short for, er…”

“Go on,” James grinned, nudging his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. “Arsewipe. You don’t know, do you?”

“Short for…”

“Frances,” Remus said. Sirius patted him on the leg condescendingly.

“Moony, don’t interrupt me. As I was saying, Fanny is short for Frances.”

“Speaking of fanny, I’ve got Head Boy duties with Lily. I’m leaving Balthazar here, don’t let him misbehave.” He winked, and let the door swing shut loudly behind him, leaving the massive pram in the middle of the room.

Sirius transformed back into Padfoot, attempted to wrestle Remus’ book from him with his teeth, then gave up and transformed again. He flopped back onto the bed heavily.

“Can I sleep in your bed? Fanny’s in mine. I don’t want to smother her,” he reasoned, fiddling with the tassels on the bed hangings until Remus reached over and slapped his hand away.

You could experience many things at wizarding boarding school, Remus contemplated, but privacy was not one of them. Sharing a bed with Sirius was an exquisite torture that could only be matched by, say, showering with him, or watching him get dressed in the morning. When did he last get to have a wank in peace? It had to have been at least nine hours ago.

“Were you born a nuisance, or did you practice really hard?”

Sirius laughed. The little flame in Remus’ chest grew a little bigger and brighter.

“Moony, I’m positively wounded! Is that a yes?”

“Mmm,” he mumbled, spelling off the light and pulling the duvet and blankets around them. Sirius threw an arm around him and snuggled in close, because he really was a nuisance. Remus moved his hips forward to create some much-needed space between them. Every time he moved forward, Sirius followed. He was going to fall off the bed at this rate.

“By the way, bit of bad news,” Sirius murmured sleepily in his ear, “the house elves have been banned from giving out flour.” His breath was hot and damp and Remus half-wished he had been saying something a bit more sexy. He rolled over to face him.

“Banned?” Sirius nodded.

“Prohibited. Disallowed. Forbidden.”

“I’m pretty sure they were never allowed to give us food in the first place. But that means if the flour baby gets damaged, we can’t make another. There goes Plan B,” he sighed.

“Don’t be a worrywart. I’ll help you take care of it. And you can help take care of Fanny.”

“I’m not touching Fanny,” Remus said, wincing at the double-entendre. “And you’re not touching mine. Goodnight, Sirius.”

*

  
Remus groaned and stretched his sore muscles, thinking longingly of the Prefects’ bathroom and it’s swimming pool-sized tub. The flour baby, Jack, wasn’t that heavy, but carrying it around all day every day was becoming a strain.

Despite that, he’d got into something of a routine. Like today, for example.

In the morning, he’d taken the baby from where he kept it safely in his locked trunk during the night, and carried it through the common room, keeping well away from the fireplace and the Prewett brothers. Fabian and Gideon’s hadn’t caught fire yet, but that was probably because their partners didn’t trust them an inch and wouldn’t let them near the flour babies at all.

He made his way with the others down to their first class, dodging the biting stair on the fifth floor staircase. The other day Eliza Millington had tripped at this very spot and accidentally hurled her flour baby across the corridor. It hit a portrait of a French sailor and burst all over the canvas. She had to be led away by Miss Burbage in tears, while the sailor shouted French swear words after her. Remus didn’t know what they meant, but they sounded incredibly rude.

In History of Magic, he cradled the baby in one arm and made notes with the other. He’d switched to using Muggle pencils. Much easier than quills and ink, since he wasn’t able to screw and unscrew an ink pot with one hand. Sirius had spent the time crafting parchment airplanes. Some of them were quite creative, and Binns didn’t notice until one flew straight through him and hit the blackboard.

Transfiguration was harder, as it was difficult to concentrate on turning beagles into beaglepusses with McGonagall breathing down his neck. And what was the point of that, anyway? He’d rather have the dog. Not that he needed one, when Padfoot was always shedding hair over his things. He raised his wand and tried the incantation one more time. A girl shrieked on the other side of the classroom - her beagle had relieved itself all over the desk. That was the end of her flour baby.

Bathroom breaks were the hardest. If he put his mind to it he could probably pee one-handed without too much trouble. Come to think of it, he’d seen James pee no-handed before. The less said about that, the better. But he didn’t dare carry the baby into the men’s room, because setting aside the risk of it coming contact with a number of unmentionable fluids, it was too weird. Remus made sure to wait until Lily was around so he could pass it to her for five minutes while he went to the bathroom. If he left it alone with his friends it would no doubt get ripped to pieces.

As well as learning how to navigate the world one-handed and paranoid, Remus now knew how it felt to be divorced. At precisely one o’clock he met Snape outside the Great Hall and passed the baby over without a word. It was a relief to not have to care of it for a while, but he felt a spark of irritation at the way Snape held it. He felt like telling him to support the head, but thought better of it.

He walked past him instead, and then did a running dive to catch Fanny, who had just sailed past his ear towards the Ravenclaw table. Lying on the stone floor, clutching it to his chest, he breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“Great catch, Moons. You’ve got good reflexes,” Sirius said approvingly. Dumbledore was clapping softly from up at the staff table.

“You’ve got butterfingers. How did that happen? Did you throw her?”

“Perish the thought!”

“Did you?”

“You’re delusional. Have some casserole,” Sirius said, flashing the charming Black smile and pulling Fanny out of Remus’ protective grip.

That afternoon he had free periods ( _study_ periods, technically), which he spent with Sirius playing a brutal version of Exploding Snap that left him with bruised knuckles. That resulted in them being kicked out of the library, so they mooched about by the lake, cloud spotting until dinnertime.

They all dossed about in the common room until Sirius announced, rudely, that he couldn’t take any more of James’ singing. James was sat by the fire with Lily, rocking Baby Balthazar and singing wizarding lullabies that sounded at least 50% made up. Remus didn’t think Lily soft enough to appreciate something as stupid as singing to a bag of flour, but his repeated attempts to impress her had been making a breakthrough lately. James had done his best to show he could be thoughtful and responsible, and it was quite nauseating. Lily tutted and shook her head, but she kept a hand on his thigh all night.

Sirius dragged Remus up the stairs and pulled him into bed, taking it for granted that they would be sharing again. Remus didn’t mind. Only slightly. The thing was, it took a lot of self-control to stop himself doing stupid things like moving Sirius’ long hair out of his face so he could sleep better, or asking him if he needed more blankets, or putting his arm around him and squeezing. And come midnight, he didn’t have a lot of self-control, so he ended up doing the stupid things.

*

Come the last week of term, all four of their babies were, miraculously, alive. That was more than could be said for Bernie Chambers’ flour baby, which had been reduced to cinders in a conflagration that had the seventh year Potions class exiting the dungeons wearing Bubble head charms. Not to mention what happened to Emily Winter’s baby. That one had led to another lecture from Flitwick on basic wand safety. The Marauders had just got out of it and were sharing a bag of Bertie Botts on the stone wall by the lake. Balthazar lay in his perambulator a few feet away.

“Another murder,” Peter remarked, shoving a handful of beans in his mouth.

“I’m sure it was an accident,” said Remus. The other three were silent. “Wasn’t it?”

James raised his hands up.

“Don’t look at me,” he said.

Remus looked to Sirius.

“Eh? Me? Surely not! How could I have had anything to do with it, I was with you all afternoon!”

“Except for that time you got up to go to the bathroom, and didn’t come back for fifty-five minutes.”

“What time is it now?” James asked, despite the clock tower being literally a stone’s throw away. Sirius made a big production of pulling back his sleeve and inspecting his wrist and ‘hmm’ing, and when Remus looked over he saw he’d drawn a fake wristwatch on his arm in biro.

“You’re amazing,” he said sarcastically. Sirius smiled back beatifically and Remus couldn’t help but laugh.

*

Thanks to James’ diversionary tactic, he had forgotten about the possibility that the others could have had anything to do with the series of strange and unfortunate incidents plaguing the seventh years until he walked into the dormitory and they all suddenly stopped talking.

“Sorry, did I hear you say tarring and feathering?” he said, dropping his bag.

Peter opened his mouth to answer, not seeing Sirius’ frantic cut-throat signal in time.

“Yeah, the Slytherins. Only we don’t have tar, so we’re using molasses.”

“Peter, you are such a snitch! If you rat us out one more time I will kill you with my bare hands,” Sirius growled.

“Sorry,” said Peter, not sounding sorry at all.

“Padfoot, you were saying?” James gestured for him to continue.

“Okay, look, you need to set up the Ventus charm AFTER you set up the ropes. If you do it before you’ll just trigger it as you’re tying them.”

“Hmm, good point. So: in the morning, they wake up, trip over the ropes, which pulls down the—“

“The bucket of molasses,” Sirius nodded.

“—molasses, yes, but where do the feathers come in?”

“Let me put it in layman’s terms,” Sirius sighed, and launched into a complicated explanation that involved a series of whistles and chalked diagrams.

Remus shook his head and went off to the bathroom to brush his teeth, away from the madness.

After he’d had a shower, he climbed into bed next to Sirius, who was already laying face down and huddled under the blankets. Remus tried not to disturb him, until an unpleasant thought occurred.

“Hang on, when are you doing this?”

“Shhh.”

“The tarring and feathering. Pads.”

“Molasses,” Sirius mumbled.

“Fine, molasses and feathering, but _when_?”

Sirius mumbled again, and Remus felt his stomach drop.

“What do you mean, now? I— Snape has the flour baby tonight. It’ll be in the dungeons. What are you thinking? I can’t risk it getting fucking tarred and feathered, Jesus Christ. Even if McGonagall doesn’t murder me, Snape will. I have to go and warn him.”

“All you talk about is that stupid flour baby!” Sirius moaned, pulling on Remus’ arm and trying to stop him putting on his shoes. “Accidents happen, you can’t look out for it every fucking second.”

“This isn’t an accident, this is a premeditated stunt. Planned by you, I might add. Were you behind that incident in Potions, too? No, don’t answer that, I don’t have time.”

He grabbed his prefect badge and raced down the stairs, shoving open the portrait hole and taking a shortcut behind a tapestry of a witch with two noses.

Sirius caught up with him in the entrance hall, wearing only boxers and a Gryffindor scarf.

“You can’t say anything, Moony, it’ll incriminate us,” he whispered loudly.

“Incriminate you, you mean,” he said, heading towards the dungeons.

Sirius pulled on his arm gently. Remus stopped and made the mistake of looking into his eyes.

Sirius twisted his arm sharply and brought Remus to his knees. They tussled, very quietly, with minimal biting and hair pulling, but Sirius was surprisingly strong. He didn’t think that he would have ended up on his back in the Entrance Hall at two in the morning, with Sirius sitting on his chest half-naked, but he was quickly learning there’s a first time for everything.

“It’ll be too late now, James will have already done it. If you wake Snape up, it’ll only set off the trap,” Sirius panted.

“Lads?”

James shrugged off the invisibility cloak and blinked his wide eyes at them. They must look a sight, Remus thought, as he lost feeling below his waist.

“If any harm comes to that baby,” Remus hissed, jabbing his finger violently, “I will personally remove each one of your teeth and grind them into dust. I will flay you limb from limb. I will hex off your balls and affix them to the Astronomy tower. I mean it.”

“Right,” said James, and went off to bed.

*

Snape was waiting at the top of the stairs. As soon as Remus climbed out of the portrait hole, Snape thrust a carrier bag into his hands, looking ready to blow a gasket.

He opened the bag to find little Jack the flour baby perfectly intact, not a scratch on him. Not even a speck of sugar. He could have cried with relief.

“What did you expect? Knowing your friends, I spelled it with an industrial-strength Impervious charm the moment the sorry thing entered our lives.” Snape glared. “And as payback for this morning—don’t deny it, I know your lot had something to do with it—you can keep this absurd facsimile infant and hand it back to Dumbledore, along with the diary.”

 _And never darken my doorway again_ , Remus added in his head as Snape stormed down the stairs away from him. He wiped his brow, thanking the gods. Only a few more days and this would be over. It was all going to be alright. And fancy the Slytherins, tarred and feathered! If only he could have seen it. He laughed.

The portrait of the Fat Lady swung open behind him.

It hit his back. He stumbled.

The bag slipped from his hand.

And Jack the flour baby went tumbling down, down, down, bypassing the hundred and forty two moving staircases and bursting with a terrible sound on the cold stone floor.

*

“Lupin. Lupin?” Frank Longbottom had stepped out of the portrait hole and was waving his hand in front of Remus’ unblinking face. “Er, are you alright?”

Speechless. A failure, that’s what he was. And he couldn’t blame it on anyone but himself, it had been in his hands, and look what he had done. He was going to flunk. He had murdered an innocent child. There was flour all over the ground floor and if Filch saw it he was going to put him in the shackles.

Following Remus’ trembling, pointed finger, Frank peered over the balustrade at the carnage below.

“Ah.”

A few other Gryffindors had come out of the portrait hole and formed a small crowd on the landing. It was all too much. Perhaps he should take the easy way out and throw himself off the balustrade.

Then Sirius grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, leading him downstairs.

“I thought this would happen. Come on, Moony, time for Plan C.”

*

Plan C involved a lot of flirting with the student nurse, Poppy.

She peered inside the carrier bag containing the remains of Jack and giggled.

“Ooh dear! He’s had a bit of an accident, hasn’t he!”

“We need a paediatrician,” Sirius said. “Urgently.”

“Hmm, I think you might do better with a needle and thread,” she said, smiling at him and tucking her curly brown hair behind her ear.

“I hear you’re brilliant,” he said, turning on the charm. It worked. She turned pink and adjusted her nurse’s cap. “You can cure anything.”

“Don’t be silly, I’m not a Healer. I only fix grazed knees and twisted ankles. I suppose I could mend this, if you like.” Sirius reached out and rested his hand lightly over hers.

“You’re not a Healer, you’re an angel,” he said wondrously.

Remus, who was leaning against the back wall with his arms folded, snorted. They both looked at him.

“No, I— it was a cough.”

“Poppy darling, could you get my poor friend some Pepper-Up?”

Twenty minutes later, they left the infirmary carrying a fully mended, good as new flour baby, _and_ the nurse had promised not to tell any of the teachers. Remus couldn’t believe it. He’d mostly recovered from the shock and the jittery, on-edge feeling had faded, but it had been replaced by vague irritation.

“Did you have to flirt with her so much?” he complained as they passed the statue of the humpback witch on the way back to the dormitory.

“I wasn’t flirting with her! What did I say that was flirty?”

“You—“ Remus thought about it, and found he couldn’t remember.

“I didn’t even tell her any jokes. I bet she’d have loved that one about the nuns.”

“I hate that one about the nuns.”

“I flirt with Flitwick all the time, you don’t care about that.”

“That’s different. He knows you’re joking.” At least, Remus hoped so.

“Yeah, he but he loves it.” Remus certainly hoped not.

“What was all the touching about? And the smiling, and the puppy-dog eyes and complimenting her on her stethoscope. And asking if she would give you a lollipop.”

“I wanted a lollipop,” Sirius said bemusedly. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing!” he shouted. Sirius stared at him.

“Okay?”

“Will you shut up!” he snapped, and hurried off to the library alone, feeling stupid. Sirius didn’t come after him.

*

In fact, Sirius didn’t talk to him for the next few days. Remus worried that he was getting the cold shoulder, but Padfoot still smiled at him at breakfast and passed him the marmalade. Remus felt too embarrassed to start a conversation, so they ended up not talking at all. Perhaps he was giving him space. James seemed a bit subdued as well. A Slytherin had given eyewitness testimony about the tarring and feathering, despite James wearing the invisibility cloak the whole time. He’d got evening detention for a week.

Maybe he was waiting for Remus to talk to him, he thought one Thursday night, tossing and turning. The bed was extremely cold now that Sirius had gone back to sleeping in his own bed, and it was hard to drift off. Remus thought he would have been grateful for the peace and quiet, but it only gave room for him to dwell on how stupid he felt. There was no way he would tell Sirius how he really felt about him, that would be lunacy. He would just yearn instead.

He was yearning in bed on Friday morning, half-asleep, when Sirius brought him a peace offering.

“What is this?” he croaked out, voice rough from sleep.

“Breakfast in bed,” Sirius said simply, arranging the stack of toast. The uppermost slice had a smiley face drawn on in chocolate sauce. And Sirius had a fair amount of chocolate sauce on his face.

“You didn’t think to bring a plate?”

“Oh, plates are overrated,” he said, waving his hand and spraying crumbs all over the sheets. “They’re a bourgeois indulgence. But if you want one, I can go down again?”

“Too late now,” Remus grumbled, sitting up and biting into a slice. It was perfect: piping hot, soaked in rich, salty butter, thick and crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. He lay back and closed his eyes, letting out an involuntary moan.

“I need your help,” Sirius said after they had demolished the whole stack of loose toast. “I’ve got a… a thing.”

“A thing?” Remus was intrigued.

“I need you to have a look at it. I might be diseased. I can’t look at it myself, because it’s, er. In an intimate area. Difficult to access.”

“Have the nurse look at it,” Remus said bitterly.

“No! I don’t want her ogling my bits.”

Oh? Remus perked up a little.

“Get James to look at it, then.”

“He already did, but he wouldn’t get close enough to tell me what it was. He said it looked like a lump. Or a boil. You know he’s blind as a bat anyway. I need you, Moony. I trust you.”

Moony sighed a deep, long-suffering sigh. It was becoming a habit.

Six minutes later he was on his knees in the shower block behind Sirius, who was stood up with his trousers round his ankles.

“ _That_ ,” Remus said, inspecting the red mass on Sirius’s right buttock, “is a jelly baby.”

“Really?”

“Really really. And a sticking charm, for some reason.”

Sirius pulled the jelly baby off with some difficulty, considered putting it in his mouth but ultimately decided against it, and cheered.

“So there’s nothing wrong with me!”

“I wouldn’t say that, but you’ll live.” He looked away while Sirius was doing his trousers up, but then Sirius was hugging him.

“Do you forgive me, then?”

“For what?” Remus asked. Sirius bit his lip and looked up at him.

“I don’t know. For whatever I did that annoyed you. I’m sorry. And— and I don’t fancy that nurse, you know. I was only talking to her to help you. I know how much you love that baby.”

“I don’t love it! I can’t wait to be rid of it, to be honest. I just want to get a good enough grade and avoid McGonagall’s wrath. You saw the bollocking she gave Matthew’s after he dropped his in the fountain.”

“Yes. Accidentally.” Sirius nodded quickly.

“…Right. So I should be thanking you. Thanks, Pads. You saved my arse.”

“And you saved mine. I mean, inspected it.”

“Yeah,” Remus said, resting his hands on Sirius’ shoulders, “I’d look where you’re sitting from now on.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, until James poked his head around the corner.

“Why are you two hugging in the showers? Have you made up? Thank Merlin, we can finally go back to normal.”

Fat chance of that ever happening.

*

Sirius had been acting weird. A few times Remus caught him looking at him strangely, but each time he gave a high-pitched laugh and denied it. One lunchtime he’d pulled Remus into an alcove by his lapels and told him he had to tell him something important, then went quiet and ran away.

After eating lunch alone, Remus returned to the dormitory. Sirius was at the creaky old desk writing a letter, surrounded by balls of crumpled parchment. When he saw Remus come in he grabbed his wand and cast a hasty _Incendio_.

“What was that?” he asked. James and Peter were sat on the floor playing Bavarian-rules gobstones. Peter didn’t look up, but James mimed zipping his mouth shut.

“Nothing,” Sirius said quickly. “An essay.”

“You just set it on fire.”

“Well, it was really bad.” He laughed. “How are you feeling? Depressed? Anguished? Dolorous?”

“Um,” Remus said. “Fine, thanks?”

“He means, are you sad about it being the end of the flour baby project tomorrow,” James said. “I for one will be sad to see Balthazar go, but all good things must come to an end.”

“And what about Fanny?” Sirius demanded.

“Couldn’t give a toss,” James replied, and took out four of Peter’s gobstones at once.

“I’ll be glad to see the back of it. I won’t take my childlessness for granted anymore, mark my words,” Remus announced.

“Finished writing the diary yet?”

He froze.

“The what?”

Snape had said something about a diary, but Remus hadn’t paid attention to it.

“The baby diary. You know we have to keep a diary of events, write down what we did with it, and stuff?”

Remus’ blood ran cold, and he fell into a chair.

“I put pictures in mine,” offered James.

“Did you put in the one of the baby smoking a bong?” asked Peter.

“I’m going to die,” Remus said.

Sirius came over and sat on him.

“What?”

“No, I’m going to fail,” Remus said, curling his arms around Sirius’ waist to steady him, “which is even worse. I forgot about it. I totally forgot. Now I have to come up with a term’s worth of stuff in one day. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this!”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Moony. I’m here to save the day. Ready for Plan D?” Sirius shook him vigorously by the shoulders.

“I’d rather shit in my hands and clap.”

Sirius jumped off his lap, tripping somewhat because Remus still had his arms around him, and then swearing because he’d fallen into the game of gobstones and got caustic gob all over his leg, and then he rummaged around in his trunk and pulled out something green and feathery. A Quick-Quotes quill. He also grabbed the flour baby (gently).

“Come with me,” he said, with his arm outstretched. Numb and weak with misery, Remus took it. He found himself led down the dormitory stairs and over to the portrait hole.

“Oi, Pads,” James called from the balcony overlooking the common room. Sirius looked up quickly; his hair flipped and smacked Remus in the face. “Are you gonna do what you said you were gonna do, or are you gonna chicken out?”

Sirius paused and seemed to gather resolve.

“I’m going to do it this time,” he said firmly.

When James disappeared, Remus dared to ask: “Should I be worried?”

Sirius squeezed his hand.

“Quite possibly.”

*

Remus leaned over and whispered in Sirius’ ear.

“What’s happening?”

“We’re having tea. Lovely rock cakes, Hagrid! What rocks did you use?”

Hagrid frowned, but continued pouring the tea. He had been telling them about a new pet he’d acquired, a giant something-or-other. Remus hadn’t been listening; he was busy watching the baby. The flour baby sat on a spindly chair in the corner of the cottage, away from naked flames. Hagrid’s puppy was asleep in its bed, snoring.

“Say, we couldn’t take one of the boats out, could we?”

“Er… I s’pose.” Hagrid got up and reached for the keys to the boathouse. “What for?”

“Yes, what for?” Remus asked.

Sirius took a long slurp of tea.

“It’s a nice day, that’s all.”

*

“It’s not a nice day, it’s the middle of winter. And we’re in the middle of a frozen lake,” Remus pointed out.

“It’s not _completely_ frozen,” said Sirius.

“No, we only had to push the boat across a mile of ice to get to water. And now what?”

“And now, you relax.”

“Sirius, you were supposed to be helping! That thing is due tomorrow! Whatever happened to Plan D?”

“This is Plan D. The quill is writing down everything we do, and we’ve done loads already, so when you get back you can make up some more stuff and finish the diary. I knew you wouldn’t be happy with making all of it up. Authenticity, and all that rot.”

“Done loads?”

“Yeah, we walked down to the grounds, that’s an activity. We strolled to Hagrid’s hut, that’s another. We had tea together. And now we’re out for a lovely boat ride. Loads of stuff.”

Remus looked around them. The boat was perfectly still and surrounded by ice.

“Is this what you call lovely? It’s minus seven degrees, I think I cracked my tooth on that cake, and I can’t relax because I’m sitting in a boat with a bag of flour and an insane person. Can we go back now?”

“I’m only trying to hel—what on earth is that?”

A long, dark shadow was undulating beneath the ice. It tapped once, twice. The boat swayed dangerously.

“It’s looks like a…”

“…massive fucking tentacle,” Remus finished, in tones of horror.

He didn’t know how they got out of there alive. They certainly didn’t get out of there _dry._ The journey back across the grounds was all a blur of shouting and screaming and protective enchantments and he somehow found himself sitting on the hearth in front of the common room fire, shivering.

Sirius handed him a towel. He opened his mouth to say thank you, but Sirius spoke over him.

“Don’t say anything. I know you’re angry at me, again, but listen. You can’t wrap that baby in cotton wool and protect it from everything. You have to take risks, sometimes. I know you look at a situation and imagine the multitude of ways it could go wrong. But you can’t think like that forever. If you never do anything, you don’t experience anything… I mean, I didn’t plan on being molested by a giant squid today, but at least my life isn’t boring!” He ran out of breath and dropped his hands, which had been gesticulating wildly, into his lap, and stared into the flames. The logs crackled and sparked.

“You know what I am,” Remus said calmly. “My furry little problem. Is it any wonder I’m not a big risk-taker?”

“I know. But it’s not a problem to me. It’s just part of you. That’s once a month, and the rest of the time you’re just like us. We all have problems, but… you have to take risk sometimes, or— or things never change,” he finished lamely, looking wet and a bit sad. His hair hung around his face, making him look like a sodden angel.

Remus’ heart beat wildly. He was right: things wouldn’t change unless he did something about it. Here was an opportunity, and he should grab it by the horns. He couldn’t take it a moment longer. He had to do it now.

Remus leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, a bit too hard. For a heart-stopping moment Sirius didn’t move.

He pulled back but Sirius followed, cupping Remus’ jaw and pressing their lips together. He opened his mouth a bit wider and Sirius licked into it, gloriously wet and hot and overwhelming.

Several breathtaking minutes later, Sirius buried his face in Remus’ shoulder and laughed.

“I thought it was just me,” he said, looking up at him and smiling shyly. Remus had never seen him look shy about anything, so he was truly in a state of shock.

“For how long?” he said softly.

“Ages. Yonks. I kept chickening out, so… an embarrassing amount of time really.”

“Me too,” Remus admitted.

“What?” Sirius slid a hand round Remus’ neck and kissed him again. “Why didn’t you say anything, you nutter? I tried to write you a letter, but it was awful and then you walked in and I set it on fire. You should have said!”

Remus laughed and pulled him into his lap.

“I thought it was just me,” he said.

*

“It’s not like you were subtle about it,” Prongs said rudely with a mouth full of jelly beans. “Weren’t you sharing a bed every night for like, a month?”

Sirius shoved at him and James fell off the wall. He was going through a pack of Bertie Botts a day; he’d given up smoking gillyweed cigs after Lily declared it a nasty habit. He was also working on giving up picking his nose and wearing the same pair of boxers three days in a row. Luckily, Lily Evans was a good trainer. She had to be. She had her work cut out for her.

It was snowing lightly, and they were sitting down on the wall by the lake, watching Hagrid cut down firs to make Christmas trees for the Great Hall decorations. Despite having no earthly reason (or mortar) to hold itself together, the wall was still rock solid.

They’d just handed in their flour babies, and Remus’ body was flooded with relief. He kept repeating himself.

“I can’t believe it. I cannot believe it. All four of them survived. In one piece. Including mine. I’m not going to fail this time. I can’t fucking believe it.”

“We know, Moony, will you shut up about it? Anyway, if you _had_ gone and lost yours, I would have just given you mine,” Sirius said, poking him in the side.

“What?”

“We’d have swapped them. I’d have failed instead. That was Plan E.”

Remus looked at him in wonder, then snogged him thoroughly. He carried on snogging him even when he felt a projectile jellybean hit him on the cheek.

“Oi! Lovebirds! Stop it,” James shouted. He climbed back onto the wall and ran his hand through his messy hair. “The project might be over, but you never know. We could be dads for real one day. It’s a bit trickier for you two, but I’ve heard about this experimental potion that—“

“Keep dreaming, Prongs,” Sirius laughed, burying his hands inside Remus’ coat for warmth. “It’ll never happen. And even if it did, Lily would never let you name it Balthazar.”

“Harry’s not such a bad name,” Remus said. “Harry Potter has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“If you do have a Pronglet, can I be godfather?” Sirius begged.

“Not a chance in hell,” said James, “not after seeing what you did to Chambers’ baby. And Millington’s. And Fox’s. And Matthews’. And—“

“So you _were_ sabotaging them!” Remus exclaimed.

“Of course I was,” Sirius grinned, and kissed him deeply. Remus savoured the dizzy, intoxicating feeling as Sirius bit lightly on his lower lip, and tried not to fall off the wall.

James fished a crumpled bit of parchment out of his pocket and waved it at them.

“What about this, then?” It was the final part of the assignment, to write about _What I Have Learned._

What had he learned, Remus thought. Trust in the universe? Faith, in Sirius? How to peel a satsuma one-handed?

Yes, all those things. And:

To be a risk-taker.

Occasionally.

_fin_.

**Author's Note:**

> Fourth wall, we hardly knew ye.  
> I borrowed the concept of ‘flour babies’ from Flour Babies, by Anne Fine (and she probably borrowed it from someone else). I haven’t read it since I was in primary and the plot isn’t meant to be similar in any way.  
> The Rube Goldberg style tarring and feathering (or chocolate sauce and feathering) is of course, from Parent Trap (1998).  
> Comments are welcome, feel free to let me know about any typos!


End file.
